Have been going to Namibia at least once a year for the last 15. Exception was 2018 when we went to Australia for a month touring and a 7-day water buffalo cull hunt and of course 2020 with the Rona lockdowns. The drought started about 7-8 yrs ago. Was supposedly the worst/longest in the previous 130yrs.
In 2017 the game numbers were already noticeably crashing. In 2019, a lot of the high fence farms were cutting their fences and opening their gates in the hopes those few surviving head could survive on their own. It wasn't a matter of water for drinking. There was NOTHGING to eat. Normally, the game farmers could get culling permits to sell meat to the local markets. The govt wasn't even allowing culling permits because the cattle farmers were selling their herds and the prices were crashing and the game meat would compete with the beef. Even the few dairy operations in the NE were selling milk cows because there was not enough feed and what feed there was to buy in, they couldn't afford.
In 2021, it was still nearly no grass. Even the typical baboon troupes you'd always see along the road from the a/p to town were absent. Same for the drive from town to hunting area in the NW. Virtually no game seen along the roads. My wife and I would normally spend a night or two in a blind over a waterhole just to watch and count the game and other animals that would come to drink. In previous years, we'd count several hundred head. The small family groups/heads would be stacked up like airliners in holding patterns, waiting for their turns to come in and drink. In 2019 we counted only a few dozen head total.
I just returned from Namibia a couple of weeks ago after 14-days there. There were a couple of baboon along the airport road, but still nothing along the main roads to the farm - not even donkeys, goats or cows. The only game that seemed to have held up were the springbok and leopard. Even the little rock hyrax that you'd normally see scurrying from the ground up into the kopjes all over were a rarity.
That area has seen nearly normal rainfall for the past two years. This year the grasses were back to mid thigh high, but in valleys you used to drive thru and see dozens to hundreds of head of gemsbok and zebra etc., game was nearly absent. It will take a good bit of time to get the numbers back up and for the serous 40" gemsbok and 60" kudu to be back.
As mentioned above, it is absolutely heartbreaking. Landowners who've devoted their entire lives and treasure to putting in bore holes, managing the game, repairing the destruction the roving herd of elephant would do to fences and wells/waterholes etc. to see it all wiped out due to no fault of their own. In "normal" times, you could go the grocery store and they'd have a section set aside to buy game meats of various types. Was usually a little less than beef. Last year and this, those sections were gone. Those high fence operations are having a difficult time trying to restock because there are very limited game numbers for sale and those that are are "over the moon high". The irony was, the while the majority of the country was suffering from drought, the rivers on the northern boarder and Caprivi strip were still flooding every year from rains to from the north.
All that said, I am NOT advocating avoiding going to Namibia to hunt. Lord knows every operator and every B&B owner and every restaurant desperately NEED income and the support of the hunting and tourist communities. There are hurtable head there and there are species that are only found there, like mountain zebra, dik-dik etc., but, you will have to work for them and make EVERY shot count because you honestly may not have another opportunity.
